Page:Life·of·Seddon•James·Drummond•1907.pdf/261

 come within its jurisdiction. Its scope has been widened in later years to include railway men, shopmen, clerks, farm labourers, and almost all wage and salary-earners. Great enterprises hang upon its awards, and its decisions directly or indirectly reach all classes of the community. By its operations prices are raised and lowered. There is hardly any corner of the social life of the colony that has not felt its influence. It deals with all questions relating to work done by any workers, and with the privileges, rights, and duties of employers and employees in any industry. The hours of work, the employment of children, the age, qualification, and status of workers, and the terms and conditions of their work, come within its jurisdiction. When it made its first appearance on the Statute Book, it boldly introduced itself, in the face of the accumulated prejudice of many years, as “an act to encourage the formation of Industrial Unions and Associations,” and it did not attempt to hide the fact that its mission was to interfere between master and man and to enter into industrial disputes.

Mr. Reeves, its author, spent laborious days and weeks in sketching his scheme. The statutes of England, America, and Australia were searched for precedents. What was considered bad in them was thrown aside, and what was deemed good was taken, and was fused into the main idea. “This Bill,” Mr. Reeves was once heard to remark, “has been drafted and drafted, and I have been so dissatisfied with some parts of it that I have altered it again and again.”

The most effective opposition to the measure came from the nominated Upper House (the Legislative Council), but the feeling against it found loudest expression in the House of Representatives, where the doctrine of non-interference was strongly upheld.

An Arbitration Bill was drafted by Mr. Reeves as early as 1891, when the Liberal Government came into office. It was circulated amongst members, but the majority of them did not receive it with much favour, and as the Government was busy with other questions at the time it was not forced on to the House of Representatives. In the following year, however, Mr. Reeves brought down a complete scheme for adjusting labour